Babylon Tales | Nathan Weaver, author

I talked about seasonal depression on this blog recently, and I think I'll keep talking about it this season. I, like many, feel a deep drop-off during the cold season. I suffer with Bipolar 2 and anxiety, so this stuff is pretty normal. As in, it happens. So over the past few years I've been trying to look at seasonal depression as a normal routine that comes around every year and stack the cards against it.  Today I'm gonna list off and talk about five different things one can try during this trying time. Some of these are obvious and some maybe less so. I hope you get something out of any of them, as I have. Always, do what works for you and your mental health. 1. UV light I knew about this one for a long time, but always kinda scoffed at it. I mean, I didn't completely disregard it, I just didn't think I could take it seriously. You understand, I'm sure. But last year, I decided to go in on a UV light and spend 30 minutes in front of it. Whil

Hello all! Part of the reason I wanted to migrate from WordPress was that I wanted an option that gave me... options. And part of that was with comments. I was generally frustrated with WordPress comments as they were very limiting. People either had to sign-in with WordPress or be a guest. I had even reached out to WordPress about adding other options for comments, and got a nice reply. But that was like 2 years ago and nothing had changed. Same could be said of other things I wanted to see simplified. But anyway, I'm not here to complain about WordPress.com, which I generally enjoyed. Instead, I'm gonna point out the comments section here. I started out with Blogger comments at first, pretty much certain I'd change them, and when for some reason I wasn't getting notifications for new comments that ushered in the change. I looked around some, but ultimately went with Disqus, which I've used a lot in the past, and generally find to be a solid solution. Pros:

Recently Dean Foods had to declare bankruptcy. And as a general rule, I usually worry about the little guys and gals who were relying on those businesses for their livelihood. But the headlines were out of control and I couldn't help but screenshot a few as they came across my phone. Enjoy the ridiculous "those darn millennial" style takes on why Dean Foods had to declare bankruptcy. 

As you may know, we've been busting away at Night Aggressions , both writing/editing and publishing at the Emerald Dragon blog each Friday. And since that's my current WIP, as they say, it's a real shame that a story idea I'd had a while back crept back into my head and won't go away. "WRITE ME! WRITE ME!" She demands. You ever have that happen during your writing? Annoying isn't it? Sometimes I'll write like a single scene or a couple of scenes/chapters just to appease. Or maybe just jot down as many notes as I can for later. Lately I've been pretty good about ignoring the urge to write something out of turn, but man oh man... that urge is so strong today. Probably too late to start tonight, but I'll probably cram out a wee scene or chapter in the coming days. I may just post it here, to tease, and see what ya'll think. So seriously though, you ever struggle with dueling ideas? How do you battle it? Do you have a will of stone

I wanted to try out Blogger's newer video capabilities. One thing about WordPress.com was that a lot of things were hidden behind paywalls. Video uploads was one of these things behind a paywall. So color me curious to see how well this works at Blogger. So here's a short clip from Star Wars Battlefront game play. My son and I were playing a while back, and we sent this storm trooper flying with the Force.

So, this was a pretty last minute decision, not gonna lie. My due date for the subscription of WordPress.com's domain mapping was due tomorrow. And last night, I just decided on a whim that I was cancelling it and moving my domain elsewhere. It wasn't so much that WordPress.com has been an awful experience, I've been using it for many years now, but I just got kinda tired of the lack of control and customization. That's part of it. Like, I'm stuck with WordPress comments, I can't switch it to something else like Disqus for example. There were also numerous limitations when it came to embedding content. Only their preferred methods were allowed. If the brand you wanted to use wasn't shown love by WordPress.com, you couldn't use it. Me trying to migrate from WordPress.com to Blogger before WP charged me for another year. The list could go on and on, really, but even then, I still liked it. The Reader for example was fantastic for following blogs an

If you can see this, that’s awesome. I’m in the process of migrating from WordPress back to Blogger. No offense to WordPress. But in the interim, please make sure you bookmark https://talesfrombabylon.com or https://blog.talesfrombabylon.com . I’ll talk more on the reason why after the site is up and running. But please don’t forget to stay connected with my blog. Hopefully I will do this as flawlessly as possible and within the next 48 hours it will be like nothing happened. Side note: WordPress users, you can subscribe to non-WordPress sites in the Reader. Feel free to add me, if that’s where you do the majority of your reading. I'm re-posting this from the WordPress variant of the blog to make sure my usual visitors see it.

We're putting our String-Along book series on sale, doing a buy one get one, and even giving away copies. Follow through to find the right deal for you or enter the giveaway -- winner announced this Friday, November 15, 2019. That's tomorrow!!!! So head over here to learn more. And then comment on the blog post or subscribe to our newsletter to enter the giveaway. #crimefiction, #ebook, #ebooks, #free-ebook, #giveaway, #reading

In case you missed it, we're up to Chapter 5 on the Emerald Dragon blog with our horror tale Night Aggressions. Here's how things are lining up: Chapter ​Chapter 1: The Real World ​October 4, 2019 Chapter 2: How about them cops? ​October 11, 2019 Chapter 3: Screw the Johnson boys October 18, 2019 Chapter 4: Hellfire and hypocrisy October 25, 2019 Chapter 5: Fun for the whole family November 1, 2019 Chapter 6: The Twisted Johnsons November 8, 2019 Chapter 7: Out of sight, out of mind November 15, 2019 Chapter 8: The work of women November 22, 2019 Chapter 9: To raise a fighter November 29, 2019 ​more to come... ​stay tuned... We still have some writing to do to wrap it up, but there's plenty of chapters already just waiting for eager eyes. We post a new chapter every Friday morning at 7:30am CST. For fun, here's my music playlist I've been using while writing Night Aggressions. I also sometimes find myse